My Paper Google

I rushed to my laptop in a panic while cooking something complicated, to look up “blanching.” I ended up very annoyed because I got onion peel on my precious keyboard. Much later, I remembered that I’ve had a sort of paper Google for years, which tells me all I could possibly want to know… and it’s survived a lot worse than onion peel.

My mother got this battered blue book when it was new, a present from her cousin in the early years of her marriage. It is called A Guide to Efficient Housekeeping and Good Cooking and was published in 1973 (a month before I was born) by the YWCA-Chennai for a fundraiser. When I left home and country to set up a kitchen of my own, my mother passed it on to me.

It’s a combination of old-fashioned recipe book and surprisingly modern how-to manual on setting up a new life. In the section called “Basic Kitchen Aids” – which I read six months after I needed it – I recognized my mother’s organized kitchen and therefore the things I had unconsciously bought anyway.

There is also crucial cooking-for-dummies information:

* The ounce to tablespoon conversion rate, for example (1 oz = 2 level tablespoons).

* How to tell a “moderate oven” from the other kinds (when a sheet of white unglazed paper placed in the heated oven turns medium brown).

* What to do if you’ve over-salted a curry (add a teaspoon of sugar or boil with slices of raw potato for a few minutes and then discard the potato).

* How to rescue something that is burnt at the bottom (transfer the good portion immediately to another dish, leaving behind at least half an inch at the bottom).

It has fascinating tit-bits (of purely academic interest until very recently), such as:

* Citrus fruits dipped in warm water are easier to juice.

* An egg-shell added to boiling bones helps produce clear stock without skimming.

* A wet knife slices hard-boiled eggs more easily.

There is even a brief but illuminating bit on throwing parties. The advice ranges in tone from the understanding, but implacable tenets of my great-aunts: “No matter how shy you are, do not forget that they are your guests and you are the hostess,” to the eminently practical voice of my mother’s sister: “Serve a dish you are confident about so you can enjoy your own party.”

The recipes themselves are appealing, enlivened by the fact that I recognize here and there something that has been the staple in our home all my life.

“The accumulated experience of many a home-maker has gone into the contents of this book” says Rachel Alexander in the preface. She used the current word for housewife 34 years ahead of its time and seems to wear confidently her title of chairman. Possibly she was too busy being one to bother with the mere semantics of chairperson. She belonged to a magnificent generation.

The names in the acknowledgements belong to strangers, but they conjure up reminiscences like photographs. I spent many childhood summers with one great-aunt or the other and – as the most easily persuaded of the grandchildren -accompanied those energetic old divas on a million duty visits, tea parties, ladies’ lunches, fundraisers and the like. In my early teens I was even occasionally dispatched alone as the representative. (I wonder how I could have turned out so socially recalcitrant, but perhaps my rabid introversion is because I’ve reached my quota of niceties).

I read the my mother’s blue book of cooking cover to cover long ago, because I read everything, compulsively. But being an indifferent cook, the spent more time on my bookshelf than in my kitchen. Now that I’ve discovered a belated pleasure in cooking (“I guess those cooking genes had to eventually kick in,” said a cousin), it’s a fairy godmother from across the seas.

The cover shows its age, but the book is neat and poised, the papers never askew or unkempt. After a lifetime of wear and tear, the spine is still straight and the spirit, indomitable. Whenever I open it, the pages susurrate like starched cotton saris rustling around tea trays on verandahs.